Drinking at school fairs
A small school in Mosgiel near Dunedin made national news three years ago when the Dunedin City Council said no to its application to sell alcohol at a school fair. Even Campbell Live covered the story. The gist of the council’s argument, according to Elmgrove School’s former principal, was that children should not witness their parents drinking. So the school fair became the proverbial pub with no beer.
It was important because it illustrated a change in the rules. Police and health officials need to be consulted by councils when considering licence applications. But councils still have room to move. The Press has reported that the police oppose all school fair applications that come before the Wellington City Council and none have been granted this year. By contrast, six school fairs in Christchurch were given special liquor licenses in the past year.
This does not mean that school halls were transformed into booze barns or the set of Once Were Warriors. It means that parents can take a quiet break from watching the bouncy castles, folk dancing and kapa haka – as fun as those things are. Selling booze can also be a useful community fundraiser for schools. It is notable that police did not oppose the applications in Christchurch but the Canterbury medical officer of health, Alistair Humphrey, did.
His position is that the presence of alcohol at a school fair, even in a highly controlled situation, normalises drinking for children. Presumably the same children never see their parents drink wine or beer at home or in restaurants. There is a counter-argument that sounds plausible to many and appeared in some applications from schools. It says that including alcohol at events like school fairs demonstrates responsible use to children. Humphrey does not accept that argument.
There is a class element to this. Does the middle-class ‘‘chardonnay crowd’’, as Humphrey characterised it, think it can manage its drinking and that those guzzling less salubrious drinks in underprivileged suburbs are the ones with the problem? Actually, it is well known that alcoholism and hazardous drinking don’t respect social divisions and that children on leafy streets are just as likely to see their parents dangerously intoxicated as children at low-decile schools. But playing the class stereotype card avoids the greater issue, which is whether a community that is closely connected to its local school should be able to make its own informed decisions about responsible drinking and socialising.
It is easy to set off moral panics about behaviour that children might witness. The absurd coverage given to the presentation of icing sugar as cocaine during a Las Vegas theme night at an Auckland primary school is a good example. In that instance, children were not even present. The so-called scandal was that Health Minister Jonathan Coleman was in the same room.
If there is a health issue to be concerned about at school fairs, it is the prevalence of sugar-laden food and drink. But we assume that parents can control their children’s urges and appetites at such times. It is good that the Christchurch City Council believes that parents can display the same responsible attitude towards a quiet pinot noir in the sun on a Saturday afternoon.